Often, distributed environments rely on geographically separate components, which may be connected via a network, to perform data storage and manipulation (e.g., read, write, and modify). A customer of these distributed environments may desire to have data for their account(s) maintained in a particular geographic location while another copy of the data is stored in a separate, geographically removed location. For example, the customer may desire to have their data stored in two or more geographical locations that are separate from one another to reduce potential data-availability issues surrounding a natural disaster. Further, a customer may decide, on an account-by-account basis, to have data maintained and/or replicated in a variety of geographical locations. For instance, for some accounts, the customer may require a plurality of locations that are geographically diverse while, for other accounts, the customer may select a single geographic location to hold sensitive data, thereby favoring privacy over duplicity. With regard to this construct above, embodiments of the present invention introduce a system and methodology for maintaining storage-account data at geographically remote locations and for providing clean and/or abrupt failover techniques that facilitate re-designation (e.g., primary vs. secondary) of the data across the locations.